


for every pendragon, an emrys leads the way

by notahotlibrarian



Series: Evil Author Day 2021 [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Evil Author Day, F/M, Hogwarts Sixth Year, arthurian legends, king arthur - Freeform, this entire fic is a set up so I could make a Monty Python joke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-16
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-17 21:28:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29478453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notahotlibrarian/pseuds/notahotlibrarian
Summary: For every reckless leader, there is always a wiser, often older, friend who lends the voice or reason to their king's hastily-thought out plans.  For Arthur, it was Merlin. For Harry, it's Hermione.He really should have let her plan out their infiltration of the Department of Mysteries a little better.Then again...a woman often meets her fate on the road she took to avoid it.#EvilAuthorDay
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Harry Potter
Series: Evil Author Day 2021 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2165199
Comments: 16
Kudos: 81





	for every pendragon, an emrys leads the way

**Author's Note:**

> I'm snowed in, I'm going through my rough drafts folder, and I'm posting anything that is complete enough to qualify as a chapter. If you like any of these, please comment!
> 
> The premise of this fic: When they break into the Department of Mysteries, Harry and Hermione accidentally set into motion an ancient prophecy - one with the power to reshape the entire wizarding world.
> 
> Happy Evil Author Day, y'all.

What would you do for love?

What would you do if you had nothing but time?

What would you do if you weren’t afraid of Death?

What would you do to avoid your fate?

Love. Time. Death. Fate. These were the original four sub-departments of the organization that eventually became the Department of Mysteries. Four areas of unexplainable magic, queer magic, warped magic, magic that went against every physical and metaphysical rule.

Love. Time. Death. Fate. Like the four cardinal directions, these both bind our lives into measurable, quantifiable forms and give our lives such unknowable, unequivocal mystery.

Love. Time. Death. Fate. These four overlap and tangle, forming the tapestry upon which every being’s story is woven. Who do they love? How do they fill their time? When do they meet Death? What is their fate?

_ Love _ . 

Hermione Granger loved Harry Potter. She loved being a witch. She loved being a muggle-born. She loved knowledge. She loved her friends. She loved justice. She loved to do what was right, not what was easy.

_ Time. _

Hermione Granger had a curious relationship with time. Spend a year flip-flopping through the hours, and you would, too. Her time was highly regimented, planned almost down to the last minute and yet so curiously chaotic, so filled with unexpected moments and unplanned adventures. 

_ Death _ .

Hermione Granger had stared Death in the face, and it had troll breath. It had venomous fangs and petrifying eyes. It had an executioner’s mask and an order from the Minister. It had the cold gleam of a trophy and the warm wetness of fresh-spilled blood. It had a wand point digging in her back and aimed at her face.

_ Fate. _

Hermione Granger had not yet met her fate when she left Hogwarts that fateful evening for the Department of Mysteries. Avoiding the Inquisitorial Squad, avoiding being spotted by muggles as they flew, avoiding Auror patrols and Ministry employees, she sought to help another avoid their own fate.

But as the saying goes...a man often meets his fate on the path he took to avoid it.

And if you’re trying to avoid Fate...best not go into the Hall of Prophecy. 

* * *

A burning pain slashed across her chest and then...nothing.

When Hermione came back to, she was no longer in the Time Room. Instead, she was in a fog that was the palest shade of purple. 

“Where...where am I?” she murmured, rubbing a hand over her aching sternum. She could feel the blood that was pouring out of her wound at a rate that should be alarming, but she couldn’t bring herself to care.

“You’re dying,” a familiar voice said from somewhere behind her.

Gasping, Hermione whirled around, only to see...herself. Only, it wasn’t the Hermione she had seen in the mirror that morning.

This Hermione….well, this Hermione looked like death. Her hair was lank and greasy, hanging in a tangled mass around her shoulders. Her skin was sallow, clinging to bones that jutted from her too-skinny body. Dark circles like bruises ringed her listless eyes. Her clothing was dirty and torn, and blood flowed not from her chest like she thought but from her forearm, covering a series of cuts that looked too intentional to be an accident.

“What- who are you?”

“I’m you, about two years in the future,” the other-Hermione said.

“Are you...are you dying as well?”

“Yes,” she answered succinctly. 

“How? What is going on?”

“We don’t have time,” other-Hermione said. “Do you trust me?”

“Well...yes, I suppose. I trust myself, and you’re me, right?”

Other-Hermione nodded. “Fair enough. As we lay dying, Sirius falls through the Veil. His death sets off a chain of events that, frankly, is bullshite. In my spare time in the last year, I’ve done a lot of thinking and a lot of researching, and I have an idea on how to avoid that fate for him.”

“Why? I mean, why Sirius?”

“Because he is the only person who puts Harry first, and not the Boy-Who-Lived.”

“He is not the only one! I care about Harry, too!” Hermione said indignantly, hands planting on her hips.

“You think I don’t know that?” the other-Hermione snapped. “Fuck, if you knew half of the things you’ll do in the next two years for him…” she trailed off, taking a deep breath that Hermione knew she was using to force herself to focus. “Look, do you want to help Harry or not?”

“You really have to ask?” Hermione snarked.

Other-Hermione gave her a brief, tired smile. “Of course. We can only lie when our death is on the line and we only break the rules for Harry.”

Hermione, thinking about the massive, ridiculous lie she’d spun to Umbridge not hours ago, nodded. “What do we have to do?”

“I’m going to die. You’re going to live, and take me back with you. I have a plan.”

“Is it an actual plan, or is it one of Harry’s half-arsed ideas that he throws at me and expects me to pull a plan out of?”

Other-Hermione huffed out a weak laugh. “You’ll see. Take my hands,” she said, holding her own hands, bloody and shaking, towards Hermione.

Hermione stepped forward and clasped her future self around the wrists. Other-Hermione murmured a slicing charm, and blood began to pour forth from her wrists, coating the younger Hermione’s hands.

Before Hermione could freak out and ask questions, other-Hermione gripped her tighter and began to chant.

_ Sanguinem meum, _

_ Hic me manere apud me voca. _

_ Cor meum _

_ Destruxit murum aedificare pontes. _

_ Dies mei _

_ Me quidem licet ambulare qua cadunt obumbratio. _

_ Fatum meum _

_ Ut omnia mea errata diffinget infectumque reddet ei. _

The purple fog darkened and swirled around them, pushing closer and closer against her skin with an ominous weight. Ice coalesced over their skin and then…

Hermione woke.

* * *

_ Go to the Death chamber, to the Veil _ , a voice in her head urged her. Heedless of the blood streaming out of the wound on her chest, of the Death Eaters surrounding her, of the members of the Order of the Phoenix duelling, of her friends shouting at her, she walked out of the Time Room and back into the circular antechamber.

Her steps were measured, steady, as she crossed the floor, even as the room spun around her. Without hesitation, she walked to a door and stepped across its threshold.

As she walked down the steps leading to the Veil, Sirius fell through. In the back of her mind, she could hear Harry’s anguished screams, Remus’ stifled sobs, but she pushed those noises away as a distraction as she continued her walk.

_ Cast a circle. Gebo. Nauthiz. Wunjo. Sowilo. _

With the precision of a conductor, Hermione wrote runes in the air with her wand, east-south-west-north, the symbols hanging in the air with a bioluminescent glow in the shadowy chamber.

_ Think Passover. Mark your door. _

Hermione stepped up to the Veil as her circle expanded to encompass the stone arch, the dais it sat upon, and Harry and Remus, who were watching her with wide eyes. She reached as high as she could and ran her bloodied hands - carrying both the current and future her’s blood - down the rough stones that formed the side of the arch.

Flames sprung up around the dais, blocking the three by the Veil from the rest of the room.

_ Good. Now repeat after me. Tenet hodie... _

Hermione holstered her wand and recited the spell, blood dripping from her palms to pool at the base of the Veil.

_ Tenet hodie mediis tenebris _

_ restituere ordinem et facere ius _

_ dedit donum fecerit hanc _

_ restituere illud quod perdidi _

_ cum mane lumen. _

As the last syllable left her lips, a hooded figure stepped through the Veil.

_ “YOU OFFER ME A FAIR TRADE, DAUGHTER OF MORGANA?” _

With a calm that wasn’t hers, Hermione nodded. “I know where the pieces are.”

“ _ CALL THEM FORTH,”  _ Death demanded.

Hermione turned and held out a hand to Harry, gesturing for him to take it. Confused, he stumbled forward, and Hermione quickly reached out and wrapped her bloody hand around his, still clutching his wand. 

“Hermione, what- what are you doing?” he asked, voice hoarse and raw.

“Do you trust me?”

Harry gave her an incredulous look. “Well, yeah?” he said questioningly.

She took a deep breath, leaning in to rest her forehead against his chest. “I’m sorry,” she whispered forlornly. “This is going to suck.”

He gave a watery, heartless laugh, resting his chin against the top of her head. “Tonight already sucks,” he said bitterly.

“The night will eventually end,” she said sagely. “And with it, all of this.” 

Before Harry could question her further, Hermione blindly reached up and placed her left palm over Harry’s famous scar, fingers spearing through his hair to grip the strands tightly. “Like calls to like,” she whispered, tears falling down her face.

Magic rolled in a shockwave around them, knocking Remus to his feet and making the flames that surrounded them sputter and burn higher. If not for Hermione’s tight grip on his hand and his head, Harry would have fallen too, breaking under the ungodly pressure on his skull, on his very being.

Hermione pulled back from her position against his chest, squaring her shoulders and tilting her chin up as if she were a knight preparing for battle. She took a deep, fortifying breath, and then pulled...something out of Harry’s scar. Something oozing, and vicious, mendaciously clinging to the Boy Who Lived as if it, too, were worthy of that title. Of living on even when Fate said it shouldn’t.

Eyes narrowing, she pulled harder. Like a muggle magician pulling scarves out of his sleeves, more and more came out of Harry’s head as Hermione gathered it in her tightly clenched fist. When finally, agonizingly, she had it all, she let Harry go and the young man slumped to the floor, barely saved from hitting his head on the stone by a fumbling, horrified Remus, who frantically checked Harry for a pulse that wasn’t there.

The ooze twisted sinuously, curling and squeezing around Hermione’s wrist like a boa crushing its prey. Hermione raised her fist in front of her, bringing the ooze chest high, before unholstering her wand again and jabbing it through the mass until her wandtip rested against her palm.

“Accio diadem,” she growled, tugging on the sympathetic magic between the piece of Voldemort’s soul in her hand and the piece that resided in Rowena Ravenclaw’s lost diadem with all the tenacity of a terrier with a bone. After a moment, the diadem materialized in front of her, hovering just above her hands. The sapphire glittered malevolently, whispering lost knowledge and tantalizing secrets to the witch standing in front of it. 

Death stepped forward from the Veil, taking the diadem in one skeletal hand and tucking it into its voluminous robe.

“Accio locket.” Hermione summoned the next item, unknowingly startling a frantic Molly Weasley, who was pacing the basement kitchen at Grimmauld Place, with a rumble of magic like a sudden thunderstorm rolling in overhead.

Death took that, too.

The process was repeated, until Death’s pockets were filled with an assortment of items. The diadem. The locket. The cup. The ring. The snake. And the piece that was inside the boy.

“ _ I THINK YOU WILL FIND THIS A FAIR TRADE, DAUGHTER OF MORGANA _ ,” Death said, nodding towards Hermione. __

Death stepped inside the Veil, and a man stepped out.

Followed by another man.

Followed by a woman.

Followed by another man.

Followed by a boy who was barely a man.

Followed by a spark of light that flew towards Harry, pulsing inside his still chest like a supernova and forcing the boy to take a deep, shuddery breath.

The flames surrounding the dais winked out, and the circle that surrounded them was broken, ending the ritual and revealing a crowd of stunned and confused Order members, along with the few Death Eaters they had captured.

* * *

Unaware of the blood dripping from her nose, from her mouth, from the wound gaping across her chest, from the scrapes on her palms, from the strange wound on her arm, Hermione grinned a bloody, wolfish grin. “Anybody else feeling the urge to sing  _ Back in Black _ ? No? Just me?” she asked, giggling a bit hysterically to herself.

* * *

Hermione stumbled, all of the energy and life force she’d borrowed from her other, future-self leaving her in a rush. She tripped over her own feet and landed roughly on her hands and knees amongst the debris scattered in the antechamber. Broken glass bit at her palms from one of the crushed prophecy orbs that had been thrown out of the Hall of Prophecy and into the antechamber when the battle had begun.

Sirius and Remus quickly rushed forward from James to help her up. As Sirius pulled her into his arms, the toes of her trainers barely brushed against one of the few orbs that had survived the battle.

While everyone fussed over the now unconscious girl, and the newly-returned Blacks, and the injured students, a name appeared on the tag that was somehow still attached to the orb.

And a week later, when an annoyed Unspeakable started reshelving the remaining prophecies, that orb was placed not in the ‘unidentified subjects’ sector that it had resided in for the last 800 years, but in a new spot.

Fate has a funny way of finding us all.

* * *

“Don’t worry, I’ll be fine,” Hermione said soothingly as she started wading into the Black Lake. The formerly calm water started to swirl around her ankles, and then her knees, as she progressed deeper into the lake.

When she was hip deep in the lake, the water swelled as ripples formed in the middle of the lake. The ripples quickly grew into a wave that engulfed Hermione suddenly, hiding her from the three boys who watched nervously at the edge of the lake.

Minutes passed slowly. Theo stood at the lake’s edge, letting the water splash against the toes of his loafers as the ripples ebbed and flowed and he stared at where Hermione had disappeared. Draco stood behind him, breeze tousling his styled hair as he nervously chewed on a thumbnail. Neville sat on the ground a few paces behind them, one hand resting on the pail of oddities Hermione had so far assembled and the other hand running along the blades of grass in a self-soothing motion.

Five minutes became ten and ten became fifteen before the water became active again. It churned ominously and all three boys moved closer to the lake, standing closer together than their house loyalties would ever warrant.

“Merlin, if we let her drown Madame Pomfrey is going to kill us all,” Neville muttered under his breath.

“She’s going to kill us all just for helping her out of the hospital wing,” Theo pointed out oh-so-helpfully.

Before Neville could respond, a jet of water shot out of the middle of the lake, reaching several meters over their heads. As quick as it came, the jet receded, revealing a pale hand holding a bejeweled sword that had not been seen in centuries...unless one happened to have been in the Chamber of Secrets a few short years ago.

* * *

It should have felt silly, like a fun uncle play-acting the story of Nimue and Arthur for his favorite niece. But his face was solemn as Magic swirled around them, the weight of his responsibility to the future leader of magical Britain resting like a warm blanket on his scarred shoulders - not foundering him under the weight, but instead encouraging him to curl up in its embrace.

“Do you swear to protect the balance of magic in these sacred isles?” Hermione asked, her voice echoing with a resonance that was not entirely hers in the clinical space.

“This I swear,” he said quietly, words rolling off his tongue without his say, as his gaze focused on Hermione’s bare feet, purple-painted toes curling against the cold stone floor..

“Do you swear to protect the lives and rights of all magical beings and creatures in these sacred isles?”

“This I swear,” he repeated, voice gaining strength as his gaze rose slowly, landing on the blood slowly seeping through the bandages wrapped around her torso.

“Do you swear your magic, your fealty, and if need be, your life, to the future Pendragon of these sacred isles?”

Remus lifted his gaze to meet Hermione’s, gold-threaded green eyes meeting amber-sparked brown. Her gaze was knowing and fond, and Remus suddenly realized that he knew who the future Pendragon was, and he had sworn his life to him long ago. This was a vow he had already made, and he had no problem reaffirming it now.

“This I swear,” he said again, voice clear and strong, his smile as tremulous as the first time he’d ever held the child of his Pack.

“So mote it be,” Hermione intoned, tapping his scarred shoulders with the flat of the blade. “Rise, Remus John Lupin, the Sir Marrok of a new age, and join your brethren at the Table.”

Remus stood slowly, savoring the wild, powerful magic that swirled around them, almost obscuring him and Hermione from the view of anyone else in the infirmary. With a deft twist of her wrist, Hermione turned the sword - _the_ sword, Excalibur, he realized - around and offered the grip of the weapon to him. "You'll need this for what I need you to do. Since the Pendragon cannot wield it yet, you shall. As his hand in the duel to come," she explained.

With shaking hands, Remus took the fabled blade. When the scarred leather wrapped around the hilt met his palms, more magic rushed over him - feral and familiar, all at once.

It felt like Pack magic, but of the Pack he made, not the one Greyback tried to force him into. It felt like House magic, but of the House he was sorted into, not the one he was descended from. It felt like Family magic, but of the Family that adopted him, not of the family he was born into.

It was strong as a werewolf's jaw, as powerful as a lion's roar, as deep reaching as the Peverell lineage. 

Before he could get too lost in the surge of power, Hermione spoke.  “Now Remus,” she said, grinning at him a bit maniacally, “don’t expect to wield supreme executive power just because some watery tart threw a sword at you,” she said, gesturing to her dripping, half-buttoned pyjamas.

Remus stared at her, aghast, as he held the sword of Godric Gryffindor loosely in his grip. He’d started out his day by getting rejected for a cashier’s position at Flourish and Blott’s  _ again  _ and had only expected his day to get worse from there. Yet here he was now, half-naked in the middle of the Hogwarts infirmary, a newly-named Knight of the Round Table, what might be Excalibur in his hand, with the prospect of an honor duel with his childhood nemesis on the horizon, and his former most well-behaved student had just quoted Monty Python at him.

What else could he do but laugh and go along?


End file.
